The present invention relates to a speaker apparatus placed in front of a television set.
In recent years, as described in JP-A-2009-267956, a speaker apparatus including a horizontally elongated housing has often been placed below a television screen. Such a speaker apparatus including a horizontally elongated housing may be used by being placed in front of a television set so as to be separated therefrom (hereinafter, such a speaker apparatus is called a “bar speaker”).
However, a television set is often provided at its lower part with a light receiver for receiving an operation signal such as infrared rays outputted from a remote control device (hereinafter referred to as a “remote control”). Since the bar speaker is placed in front of the television set, the light receiver of the television set is unfortunately hidden by the bar speaker. Accordingly, the television set cannot receive an operation signal from the remote control.
Therefore, as described in JP-A-09-275591, for example, a relay apparatus (which may also be referred to as a “repeater apparatus”) for relaying an operation signal from a remote control is conceivably interposed between the remoter control and television set. When the remote control is operated by a user and an operation signal is transmitted to the relay apparatus, the relay apparatus transmits, to the television set, the operation signal received from the remote control.
On the other hand, in recent years, information of an operation signal transmitted from a remote control has been learned by a speaker apparatus, and the apparatus has also been operated in accordance with the operation signal from the remote control. In this case, a user can operate a plurality of apparatuses by using the single remote control.
When a user listens to sounds of a television set by using a speaker apparatus such as the bar speaker provided separately from the television set, it is preferable that a sound level of the television set is reduced and the user mainly listens to sounds of the speaker apparatus. Suppose that the speaker apparatus relays a received operation signal and learns information of the operation signal from a remote control, and the apparatus is also operated in accordance with the operation signal as mentioned above. In that case, for example, when the user operates the remote control with the intention of increasing a sound level of the speaker apparatus, not only the sound level of the speaker apparatus but also the sound level of the television set is increased, thereby exerting an adverse influence on acoustic effects.